Lead time, time lines and retrospectives: Workshop on factors that induce or reduce development lead time

Short time-to-market (TTM) and an ability to quickly develop and release new products to the market give an important competitive advantage over competitors, especially for companies operating in a market-driven domain. Many companies have turned to agile methods in an attempt to decrease development lead time and TTM, while at the same time increase their responsiveness to changes in market and customer expectations. But, which are the factors to watch out for? What influences the lead times for developing the required software? Through a research study at a large telecommunication company we have found 6 main categories that may impact the lead-time for software development, namely

Business awareness

Collaboration

People: Experience & attitude

Planning & risk management

Platform strategy & dependencies

Software process

For each category a number of factors that may reduce (i.e. shorten) and induce (i.e. increase) the lead time have been identified. At the workshop we will present these factors and, with your help, investigate to which degree they are applicable also to other domains and settings. The session will be interactive and participants are invited to contribute by sharing relevant experience from their contexts. The aim is to extend our joint insight into how software processes and methods may impact development lead time and TTM.

The retrospective method used to study project timelines for completed projects at the company will also be briefly described. The method has been designed to base retrospective meetings on pre-prepared timelines of project history, constructed from data extracted from scope- and project planning systems. The visual project overview was found to support both a focused and factual discussions of project history, as well as, provide memory recall of past events.